


the lower depths

by usuallyproperlyhydrated



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: adult violet baudelaire, other characters are in the story but it's not About Them, wlw violet baudelaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-02 14:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17266097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usuallyproperlyhydrated/pseuds/usuallyproperlyhydrated
Summary: By the time Violet Baudelaire was twenty-two years of age, she was a wildly successful inventor, the caretaker of two children, and a high-functioning alcoholic, a phrase which here means “an individual who uses alcohol to cope with life’s difficulties but sneakily and in a way that did not impede her work.”





	1. chapter the first

By the time Violet Baudelaire was twenty-two years of age, she was a wildly successful inventor, the caretaker of two children, and a high-functioning alcoholic, a phrase which here means “an individual who uses alcohol to cope with life’s difficulties but sneakily and in a way that did not impede her work.”

The minute she turned eighteen, Violet marched into Mulctuary Money Management and took control of her parents’ large fortune and bought her family a home with all the things they had dreamed of (and more) while chopping wood in Count Olaf’s backyard four long years ago. There was an inventing studio, of course, a vast library, and a stylish, modern kitchen. The house was big but not cavernous; the three siblings had lost their taste for enormous living quarters at 667 Dark Avenue. Their rooms were right next to one another so Violet could hear Klaus, Sunny, or Beatrice when they cried out in their sleep, which was more often than not. Even when her family didn’t need her, Violet didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. There was too much disaster and there were too many deaths and too many difficult decisions in her past.

On one such night not long after her eighteenth birthday, when she was ruminating on the events of her short life and the events of her parents’ lives, she felt the dull but ever-present tension of responsibility even more strongly than normal. The fortune was supposed to  _ fix _ things. She’d spent the last two years shepherding her family from town to town, never staying long in one place, never able to sustain the feeling of safety for long. They’d scraped by doing odd jobs and squatting in whatever buildings they could find. Several well-meaning adults had offered to take the Baudelaires into their homes, but Violet had always declined, no matter how upstanding or wholesome they appeared.

Responsibility had weighed heavily on her then, too, but it was of a more primal strain, a phrase which here means “focused on keeping those in her care fed and clothed, not on the big picture.”

And so now that they had money and they knew where their meals were coming from and where they would be staying a year from now? Now Violet had other things to worry about.

The matter of schooling, for instance. The Baudelaires’ formal education had been spotty, no matter how comprehensive their education on secret codes, improvised lifesaving devices, and treachery had been. Didn’t Sunny and Beatrice—even Klaus, although he was only two years younger than her—deserve some sense of normalcy?

“You’re going to school,” Violet announced one morning, firmly but not unkindly.

Sunny, who was standing on a stepstool at the stove where she was making crepes, said, “Culinary school?”

“Kindergarten,” Violet said.

“No thanks.” Sunny stuck her tongue out. “What could they possibly teach me that you and Klaus can’t?”

“How to make friends with people your own age.”

“Children my age are boring.”

Which, to be fair, was true. In a few of the places the Baudelaires had stayed after leaving the island, there had been opportunities to befriend local children. They were unable to keep up with Sunny’s extensive vocabulary and she was unable to comprehend why they would spend so much of their time riding bicycles or playing games.

“You have to go anyway,” Violet said. “You’re only five. It will be a long time before you can spend time with adults and have them take you seriously, so you might as well learn to get along with your peers.”

Sunny said her favorite swear word, which she’d picked up during a brief stint with a crew of female Finnish pirates, not bothering to try to hide her disdain.

“Sunny!” Klaus put his hands over Beatrice’s ears, who was sitting on his lap.

“It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. Besides, it’s a fitting word for Violet’s inane idea.”

“Violet’s idea isn’t inane.”

“You’re just saying that because  _ you _ don’t have to go.”

“Actually,” said Violet as Klaus opened his mouth to reply, “Klaus has to go to school too. Not kindergarten, obviously, but secondary school.”

Now it was Klaus’ turn to look disdainful. “You want me to go sit in classes with people whose only trial in life has been acne or raging hormones?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

That was the problem. Violet’s hair had been tied up for hours the night before, trying to figure out why exactly she wanted this for her brother and sister. They’d never be normal. No amount of feigning normalcy could undo the last four tumultuous years of their lives.

It had something to do with V.F.D. and how they’d trained the volunteers from when they were young and how when those volunteers grew up, they only knew each other. They only had each other. When some started lighting fires and the group fractured into parts, there were a limited number of good and noble people who could put those fires out. And those good and noble people had died or been corrupted or both.

Her siblings were good and noble. What would happen to them if they only ever had each other? They were self-sustaining in a physical sense, but what about in an emotional sense? So far they had only been able to rely on each other, but what if they were only drawing closer and closer together and they smothered one another?

That, Violet supposed, had been a problem with V.F.D. They’d smothered one another, letting little tics and habits grate on each other until finally the friction caused a spark that got out of control.

Violet didn’t have a “why” for Klaus or for Sunny. She couldn’t draw them a diagram of all the good things that would happen to them if they went to school and played at being normal.

She thought of telling them that she was older and more experienced, that she was acting in their best interests. How many adults had said that to them? The very idea of invoking  _ in loco parentis _ made bile rise in her throat.

“It’s just something I want you to try,” she finally said. “Please.”

Klaus and Sunny trusted their sister, so even though they disliked the idea, they relented.

“But I’m going to a university,” Klaus said, “not a secondary school.”

Violet went to school too, although not like her siblings. She stayed at home with Beatrice, who was too small to go to school, and completed an engineering degree in a stunningly short amount of time. She took Beatrice to play in the park and while Beatrice cautiously made friends with some of the other children, Violet would read or sketch.

“That’s quite good,” a voice said from over her shoulder one afternoon.

Violet jumped. She didn’t like being snuck up on.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” A young woman a few years older than Violet sat on the bench next to her. “I’m not a particularly quiet walker, but you were so engrossed in your art that you must not have heard me.”

“Oh,” said Violet, wondering what the young woman wanted.

“I’ve seen you here a few times now,” the young woman continued, “and I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Jane, Jane Rossetti.”

“Violet Baudelaire.” Violet shook the proffered hand and braced herself for the glint of recognition that was associated with her last name in this city.

None came. This girl had probably been too young to read the papers at the time the Baudelaires were accused of murder or perhaps she hadn’t grown up there.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jane. Her handshake was firm but not unkind. “What are you drawing?”

Violet closed her commonplace book. “Just doodling. Are you here with your children?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m the governess of that little boy on the swing over there.” She gestured to a boy of about four or five who was seeing how high he could go. “Are you here with yours?”

“More or less.” Beatrice wasn’t her child biologically nor was she her sibling. Technically she was her ward, but Violet didn’t like that word any more than she liked the word “guardian.” Beatrice was Violet’s and that was all that mattered.

She did not gesture to where Beatrice playing a game she called “bats and owls” with two other children.

If Jane found Violet’s reticence odd, she didn’t show it. She smiled as she got up from the bench.

“It was nice to meet you, Violet Baudelaire. I hope to see you again.”

Violet raised her hand in farewell, not echoing the sentiment.

The next day Violet, under the guise of reading  _ War and Peace _ , watched Jane Rossetti. In snatches and glimpses, she saw Jane enthusiastically push the little boy on the swing and gently coax him out of jumping off the monkey bars. There was nothing about her that appeared sinister, at least not yet. Violet had just made up her mind to say something to her—something pleasant yet banal, such as “Nice weather we’re having,”—when Jane and the little boy exited the park.

Violet leaned her back against the bench more fully and put the leather-bound book down beside her. Were her siblings having this much trouble making friends at school? Beatrice had asked if she could have play dates with some of the friends she’d made, but that was different as Beatrice was younger than the other Baudelaires and therefore more resilient, a word which here means “able to quickly recover from the events of her relatively traumatic childhood.”

But no, Violet soon realized that Beatrice was not the only Baudelaire who was forming connections outside the family.

“I won’t be home for supper tonight,” Klaus said over the telephone. “A group of us are studying for an exam next week and so we’re ordering take-out.”

“That’s all right,” Violet assured him, although she felt uneasy. She felt as though she should tell him to be home before midnight or not to drink any alcohol; anything that a regular parent or guardian would say. Instead she went with “Be safe.”

“I will.”

During supper, Sunny told Violet and Beatrice all about one of her classmates, studiously avoiding using the word “friend” to describe him.

“One of his fathers is the head chef at one of the fancy restaurants downtown,” she said. “Can I go sometime and try the food? Sebastian said his father would gladly give me a tour of the kitchen.”

“It isn’t Café Salmonella, is it?” Violet tried to joke.

Sunny looked blankly at her elder sister for a moment, then realized to what she was referring. “No, of course not. That shut down years ago and was remodeled into a gourmet soda shop.”

Had Violet been in a better mood, she might have made a funny remark about parsley soda or aqueous martinis or pinstripe suits. It was good that the details of their horribly unfortunate past were becoming blurry in Sunny’s mind—the sooner they disappeared completely, the better. However, if memories of the trauma that bound them together were to fade, what would she and her sister have in common? Violet let Sunny and Beatrice dominate the conversation for the rest of the evening, then tucked them into bed and kissed their foreheads.

The discordant feelings of responsibility and helplessness weighed heavily upon her.

Her inventing studio held no interest for her, so she wandered through the house, through the library, and into the kitchen. An assortment of bottles of cooking alcohol graced the top shelf of one of the pantries, out of the reach of Beatrice, even though she knew better than to touch them. Violet sorted through them for something to do. Beer, bourbon, cognac, gin, red wine, rum, sherry, tequila, whiskey, white wine, vodka…

She immediately put the white and red wine back on the shelf. The smell of wine on Olaf’s breath still appeared in her nightmares, even if Olaf himself wasn’t in sight.

Violet settled on rum because the Finnish pirates had been fond of it and she had never had any while aboard their ship, despite their teasing. She had wanted to be sober while taking care of her charges.

That didn’t apply now. Her charges were safe in bed with no villainous counts or morally gray organizations to threaten them. If Klaus were to run into any unsavory characters while out with his study group, he was resourceful enough to get away.

No, her family didn’t need her to be clear headed right now.

Violet uncapped the bottle of rum.

It smelled like ocean waves and sunburn and the sweet kiss of the young rougish pirate named Katja who had taught Violet more than how to tie twenty new knots.

She closed her eyes.

It was less strong than she’d expected. She didn’t cough or sputter or feel it burn as it went down her throat. It grounded her, even as her head began to feel as though it would float away.

Violet Baudelaire recapped the rum and took it to her room.


	2. chapter the second

Two years after claiming her parents’ large fortune, Violet Baudelaire had seventeen patents to her name and only collected the minimum royalty for each of them. Patents for an accident-proof stamping machine and fully automated tree debarker were among the first she’d come up with. She gifted the patents to every lumber mill within a hundred miles and promised to lend financial support in implementing the updates, provided she could come see the mills when they were finished.

“You ought to make them sign a contract before giving them the money,” counseled Ms. Bronte Burns, Violet’s patent lawyer. “You can’t just take them at their word.”

“I’m not taking them at their word; I’m going to follow up with them to make sure they used the funds properly.”

“And if they don’t, you won’t have any legal recourse to get the money back.”

Violet fiddled with the ribbon in her pocket, a word which here means “wound it tightly around her fingers and then let it loose again.” It mattered to her that the factories used the money to safely update their machinery, of course, but if they decided to use that money to feed or pay or clothe their workers? She wouldn’t have a problem with that. But if the money ended up in the pockets of the owners at the expense of both the machinery and the workers… The Baudelaires could take the hit financially and as much as Violet hated the idea of spending months and even years in court to get it back, she hated the idea of exploitative villains winning even more.

“I’ll have to talk to Klaus about it,” she said at last.

Ms. Burns walked her to the door of her office and, after hesitating slightly, laid a soft hand on Violet’s shoulder. She was middle aged, dressed sensibly, and always answered telephone calls promptly and clearly. Best of all, she had a clear understanding of proper boundaries and never asked Violet anything about her life beyond the cursory “How is your family?” at the beginning of meetings.

On the day in question, however, she looked thoughtfully at Violet, taking in the bags under her eyes that her foundation didn’t quite conceal and the hair on top of her head that hadn’t been washed in a while. She opened her mouth and Violet knew, with awful clarity, that what she said would be sympathetic or tender or warm. Violet also knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

“Goodbye, Ms. Burns,” she said, pushing past her into the lobby. “I’ll see you next month.”

In addition to his school workload, which he relished, Klaus made time to research any and all financial or legal questions Violet threw his way. She was no slouch at research herself by that time, a phrase which here means “could navigate even the most daunting texts with relative ease,” but it gave her comfort to see him perform the role he’d always filled in their family.

“Ms. Burns is right,” he told her one morning over a cup of coffee and a vegetarian sausage roll. Beatrice and Sunny had already taken the trolley to school. “You have to put some sort of protection on the donation or the owners will walk all over you. You remember Sir. He could have bought a whole room full of those awful green cigars with the sum you’re planning to give.”

“Sir isn’t in the lumber industry anymore. Lucky Smells burned down,” Violet replied. He and Charles had disappeared without a trace.

“No, but there are plenty of people like him,” Klaus said grimly.

“I guess. But I don’t want to be one of those rich people who has dozens of strings attached to their gifts.”

“There won’t be dozens of strings, just the one. They have to use it for the good of the workers, i.e., to update the machinery. If they don’t do that, they forfeit the money.”

He said it so calmly, so surely. Violet couldn’t respond because she was so nearly bowled over by his assuredness. Money made sense to him. Laws made sense to him. Social structures made sense to him.

His future and his role in society made sense to him.

“What?” he asked after he swallowed a bite of roll.

She took a sip of her coffee. (She had not yet begun lacing her morning drink with vodka; that would begin in six months.)

“Nothing. I’ll give Ms. Burns a call later. Have a good day at school.”

Violet still spent some mornings in the park, although Beatrice, being old enough to attend school, didn’t accompany her. She watched the toddlers on the playground from afar and missed the time she’d spent with Beatrice, specifically, not the time she spent with toddlers in general.

She loved Sunny and Beatrice dearly. However, she felt rather done with raising small children. Violet would stay with both of them until they were eighteen, of course, but she did not look back on their infancy and toddlerhood with nostalgia.

And she did not want to have children of her own.

Had she ever met a capable and worthy parent? Casting her mind back even before the fire that killed her parents, she could not think of a single one. Her own parents had seemed kind and had nourished hers and her siblings’ special interests, but in hindsight that seemed to be less out of any tenderness on their part and more to hone their skills to join V.F.D.

It was true that they had gone to the island to get away from the world—from V.F.D.—and had realized that “the world” was replicated in microcosm form in anyplace they might look. So they had come back to civilization and apparently decided to train their children to be able to take on the world.

But if they had just _told_ Violet, Klaus, and Sunny that there were sinister people in the world… If they had mentioned anything about their tenure in the secret organization or that they had enemies who the children would undoubtedly cross one day.

_I suppose I wouldn’t have believed them_ , Violet thought. The world had seemed bright and just before they died. Everything had a place, and everything had a meaning.

Violet wasn’t quite a nihilist—she believed that her good acts mattered, even if they didn’t seem to tip the overall scales of good versus evil in the world. But there was something so exhausting about fighting against the world’s natural decay into chaos.

“You look like you could use a nice hot drink.”

Standing squarely in front of her—not at her shoulder as she had done the very first time—was Jane Rossetti, offering her a white travel cup.

“Oh, I…” Violet needed to think of an excuse quickly. She had seen Jane a couple times after their first meeting two years ago, and Jane had given Violet her telephone number in case she wanted to schedule a play date between Beatrice and Jane’s ward or get dinner sometime.

Violet had never called.

And she had never taken Beatrice back to that park.

“It isn’t a guilt gift,” Jane said, her eyes crinkling slightly. “I happened to catch sight of you getting off the bus and thought you might want some tea. You don’t have to accept it. Just tell me no and I’ll be on my way.”

It was just tea. Jane was just a person. An amiable person (a phrase which here means “appearing friendly and not to have an ulterior motive in the slightest”) at that.

“It is chilly,” Violet said, taking the cup from Jane’s hands without brushing their fingers together. “Thank you.”

Jane sat next to Violet and got some packets out of her coat pocket. “I didn’t know if you liked creamer or sugar, so I brought both.”

“Sugar, please.”

Violet no longer believed that tea should be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword. She had learned to take sweetness when she could get it.

“How is Theodore?” she asked, referring to Jane’s charge.

“Doing well. He’s on a trip to the Mortmain Mountains with his parents, so I’m at my leisure.”

Violet made a face. “Why would anyone want to go there?”

“I hear it’s very pretty and the mountain air is refreshing. Have you been?”

“Once.” The desire to exit the park and the conversation as swiftly as possible grew so much that Violet could feel it like a sliver under her skin. “It left a lot to be desired.”

As if she was able to sense her discomfort, Jane changed the subject gracefully and was soon amusing Violet with a story about a mix-up she’d had at the café. Violet even found herself laughing, a fact which seemed to please Jane.

When their time together ended—Violet still had to call Ms. Burns before the business day ended—Jane gave her a smile tinged with wistfulness.

“I do hope that we meet again sooner rather than later.” She didn’t wait to see Violet’s reaction and was halfway to the park’s gate before Violet had decided what to do.

She sprinted after Jane and drew alongside her, offering her empty cup.

Jane examined the phone number scrawled on the side and then examined Violet’s expression.

“You don’t have to give me this,” she told her. “I understand needing to keep things private.”

“I want to see you again,” Violet said simply, a word which here means “in few words” rather than “with uncomplicated feelings.”

She was uncertain in what capacity or how often, but she did know she wanted to see Jane again. And she didn’t trust herself to make the first move. If she thought too much about it, she would just throw Jane’s number into the garbage can and burn it with scraps of failed inventing ideas when she was four drinks deep, like last time.

Jane’s cheeks pinked, and she accepted the cup.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Violet Baudelaire.”

There were several inventions in Violet’s studio that she did not have a patent for. Some awaited some key finishing touches before being submitted to the patent office and some were contraptions that she would never share with the world.

One such apparatus was a new twist on an old classic, the concealed drawer. At the bottom of her sizable metal scrap bucket, accessible only to someone who knew what she was doing, was a hidey hole for Violet’s alcohol. There was another such secret place in her bedroom, concealed in a rather large box of old blueprints.

Violet toggled the correct scrap of metal just so, opening the compartment and bringing out a half-empty bottle of brandy. True, it was only one in the afternoon, but her nerves needed steadying after the run-in with Jane and by the time the girls came home, she would be perfectly sober.

The brandy was smooth and tantalized her taste buds with notes of cinnamon and vanilla. She sat on the floor, her back braced against the table saw.

Coping with unfortunate events was like sea legs, she mused. It took some time to become accustomed to maneuvering effectively in the midst of all the rolling and pitching, and then once you found yourself on solid land again, it took another adjustment period to figure out how to walk without compensating for the rolling and pitching. It had been four years since the truly alarming events had ended, and two since their situation had become completely stable.

How much longer would she need before she felt like herself again?

After another mouthful of brandy, her thoughts took an even more melancholy turn.

Would she recognize herself as she had been at fourteen? Bright-eyed and curious and fiercely protective of her family. She was still protective of them, naturally, but the manner in which she was able to protect them had shifted so drastically. Was she curious? No. She had seen too much of the world not to be wary rather than hopeful now every time something surprised her.

In lieu of wasting time to consider whether she was “bright-eyed” or not, Violet drained the bottle until it was three-fourths empty.

The telephone by the door rang. Violet got to her feet, a smidgen less than steady, and reached for it.

“This is the Baudelaire residence, Violet speaking.”

“Violet?”

The voice cleared her head, crashing over her like the freezing, polluted water of the Stricken Stream.

“Quigley,” she whispered.


	3. chapter the third

As Beatrice set the table in the dining room, she continued her conversation with Sunny, who was in the adjoining kitchen.

“So Isadora is a poet, Duncan is a journalist, and Quigley is a cartographer,” she said as she laid out napkins. “Right?”

“Yes,” Sunny confirmed.

Klaus, who was getting a glass pitcher from a shelf that Sunny couldn’t reach, added, “At least, they were when we last saw them. It’s been a while. They might have changed.”

“Changed fundamental aspects of their interests and personalities?” Sunny accepted the pitcher from him with a dubious expression and began to mix in the ingredients for her fresh mint lemonade. “Highly unlikely.”

“We don’t know what they’ve gone through,” Klaus said.

Beatrice came back into the kitchen for silverware. She wasn’t quite tall enough to reach into the drawer without use of a step stool. “You three have gone through trials and you haven’t changed your interests or personalities.”

Violet rinsed a glass that had minutes earlier contained a considerable amount of tequila to calm her anxiety about the night’s dinner. She washed it thoroughly with dish soap and nearly scalding water to get rid of any lingering alcoholic scent. Although the scene around her seemed sharper now, her anxiety had softened from a fanged monstrosity to a merely menacing blur.

“No we haven’t,” she told Beatrice with a brightness she didn’t feel. “But even if they have changed, they’ll still be our friends.”

“Naturally,” Klaus said.

“Of course,” agreed Sunny.

“And they’ll certainly like me and want to be my friend.” Beatrice’s confident tone slipped as she said, “Won’t they?”

Violet got on Beatrice’s eye level and tucked a lock of hair behind her small ear. “If they don’t, I’ll throw them out immediately.”

Beatrice broke out into a smile and threw her arms around Violet. She was so much more tactile than Sunny, who rarely initiated hugs and accepted them in a magnanimous way, a phrase which here means “in the same manner one would receive a slobbery tennis ball from a puppy.”

“You wouldn’t really throw the Quagmires out,” Sunny said when the hug ended. “Not after all we’ve been through together. Not after you and Quigley kissed on Mount Fraught.”

“Sunny!” Klaus exclaimed.

“What? We’re all thinking it. Besides, why else would she have been so distraught after he got separated from us?”

If she had been sober, Violet might have blushed or stammered or been, in general, very awkward about the whole event. It had been her first kiss, and who wanted to give their siblings an accurate retelling of their first kiss? She had never heard the story of her mother or father’s first kiss. She had never even heard the story of any of her friends’ first kisses. She didn’t know what qualified as too much information.

Besides, her kiss with Quigley had been complicated. It had been wrapped up in her intense loyalty to the Quagmire triplets as a whole and as individuals and further entangled with the question of whether or not she actually had time to have crushes or kisses with her family member’s lives in jeopardy. She was very glad for the Quagmires that their brother was alive, but she was also terribly disappointed that the survivor of the fire hadn’t turned out to be one of her parents. There was also the fact that there were times when she’d been unable to believe that she’d kiss anyone before she died at the hands of Olaf or one of his henchpeople or being burned at the stake.

It was a complex topic, one that she didn’t necessarily want to discuss with anyone, even her siblings. So, since she was liquored up and didn’t feel pressured to explain, Violet merely shrugged her shoulders and popped a tomato from the top of the salad into her mouth. Sunny replaced the pilfered vegetable and scowled at her older sister.

“Come on, Violet, admit it! We’re a no-secret family.”

That certainly wasn’t true. It hadn’t been when their parents were alive and it wasn’t now. Everyone needed privacy. As long as they weren’t hurting anyone, secrets were a healthy part of one’s life.

“If it was crucial to your safety, I would tell you. As it is, it’s none of your business.” She gave Sunny’s short hair a light tug to annoy her. “Does anything else need to be brought to the table?”

As Violet carried the salad into the dining room, Sunny yelled, “Yes! Your honesty!” after her.

Surveying the simple, elegant dinnerware, Violet wondered if there was enough time to nip by her inventing studio and take another shot to keep this wave of nonchalance going until after dessert was served. Perhaps she should make another alcohol cache in this area of the house for emergencies. Klaus and Sunny were arguing about something in almost-muted tones in the kitchen. Beatrice had just come out with her hands clasped over her ears when the deep tones of the doorbell sounded.

The Quagmires’ near-identicalness wasn’t quite as eerie as it had been when the Baudelaires first met them. It was, however, unusual to see all three of them on the doorstep instead of just Duncan and Isadora or just Quigley. And it was unusual to see them with a bottle of sparkling grape juice and a bouquet of flowers rather than their commonplace books, stuffed with articles and couplets and maps and answers to some (but not all) of the Baudelaires’ questions.

They were older, just as the Baudelaires were. But while the changes in the Baudelaire siblings had seemed gradual—they hadn’t realized that Klaus was taller than Violet until someone else pointed it out to them—the changes in the Quagmires seemed abrupt. They were all still around the same height, but Duncan and Quigley (Violet couldn’t quite tell who was who, although she felt she should) had their hair styled differently and Isadora had a scar on her left temple. In the split second before they smiled, all three had similar somber expressions.

“Violet!” Quigley—or Duncan?—raised the bouquet of flowers in greeting.

“Quagmires!” Violet tried to hug all three of them at once. “You’re a sight for sore eyes!”

Duncan—or Quigley?—kept a hand on her shoulder as she stepped aside to let them into the house.

“It’s so good to see you,” he said as his siblings passed.

More exclamations and appraisals took place in the dining room and the Quagmires and Beatrice were introduced to one another. Duncan (his hair was neatly parted on the left) and Quigley (his hair was styled more haphazardly) knelt to shake her hand and Beatrice, immediately taken with their charm and pleasing facial features, demanded to be placed between them at the table.

The Baudelaires and Quagmires sat down to eat together, something they hadn’t done since Prufrock Prep. With some laughter, they explained Vice Principal Nero’s ridiculous rules to Beatrice. What had been horrible at the time was given a shine of nostalgia.

“So,” Klaus said as they tucked into their entrees, “where have you three been?”

“Everywhere,” said Isadora, pulling a notebook out of her jacket pocket. It obviously wasn’t her original commonplace book, but it was still green and spiralbound and well-worn. She flipped through the pages deftly. “But mostly Peru.”

“Peru?” Sunny asked. “That’s where Uncle Monty was going to take us.”

“We know,” Quigley said. “That’s where volunteers used to go when things got too hot for them here.”

“Or if not Peru then Winnipeg,” Duncan added. “Where we also went.”

“Start from the beginning,” Klaus said.

The Quagmires didn’t start from the very beginning—the Baudelaires knew all about the fire that had killed their parents and, they thought, Quigley, the time they spent in the clutches of Count Olaf, and how they escaped onto Hector’s self-sustaining hot air mobile home, which was where the Quagmires picked up.

After making repairs to the bits of the hot air mobile home that had been damaged by Esmè Squalor, they had simply drifted wherever the air currents took them. Hector didn’t have a flight path planned. He wanted to get as far away from the Village of Fowl Devotees as he could.

“He wasn’t much of a guardian,” Isadora said. “Although he could cook pretty well and taught Duncan and I a thing or two about inventing things. Eventually we built a radio and tried to keep in touch with the world that way.”

“We wanted to make sure that you Baudelaires were safe,” Duncan said. “And we still had some unanswered questions that all the books in the library basket couldn’t answer.”

They got in touch with V.F.D. quite by accident. Their radio picked up on a frequency being used by a J.S. to send out an SOS call to all available volunteers to arrive at the Hotel Denouement by Thursday.

“She wouldn’t tell us what her initials stood for because she was worried that members on the other side of the schism were listening. We told her our last name and then she told us the shocking news that Quigley was still alive.” Isadora smiled at her brother.

Duncan continued where Isadora had left off. “According to her sources, he had last been seen near the Stricken Stream. We had a choice to make: join you at the hotel or find our brother.” He gave the Baudelaires an apologetic look.

“You made the right decision,” Violet assured him. She had barely touched her lemonade.

“It wasn’t just that we wanted to find Quigley,” Isadora explained. “Hector didn’t like the idea of getting involved in another conflict, even if it meant helping you.”

“We had a hard enough time getting him to lower the hot air mobile home enough to pick up Quigley when we finally found him near Laertes Lake.”

“We understand,” Klaus said.

“ _And as we sailed the skies so blue / We were the Quagmire three anew,_ ” Isadora recited.

“It was my idea to go to Peru,” Quigley said.

He had read about other volunteers going there and had come across a passage that led him to believe that even their parents had been there for a spell. They didn’t tell Hector that Peru was a haven for V.F.D. members in hot water. Instead, they told him they were ready for warmer climes and a change of scenery. The self-sustaining mobile hot air mobile home met its end in the Andes, as had Hector. A terrible snowstorm had caused them to crash and then Hector had been killed by a mountain lion while out gathering wood.

“That’s grim,” Sunny said. “He may not have been a very good guardian, but no one deserves to be eaten by a mountain lion.”

The Quagmires spent a few years in Peru, gathering what scraps of information they could about their parents’ journey there.

“It seemed that they were following another volunteer who had sensitive information regarding the sugar bowl,” Duncan said, consulting his commonplace book.

Violet stifled a groan. She’d hoped to never hear about that damn sugar bowl ever again. There was not enough alcohol in the world that would make sitting through another discussion about it pleasant. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. Politely, she excused herself from the table and downed half a bottle of vodka from the stash in her studio. She waited for her head to get the slightest bit swimmy before heading back to the dining table.

After discovering all they could, the Quagmires headed to Winnipeg in search of more answers. Violet nodded along to their narrative, not really paying attention. Something about a duchess? In any case, they had been so embroiled in what was happening there that they didn’t realize they had turned eighteen until nearly three weeks after their birthday.

“We weren’t certain we even wanted to come back to claim the sapphires,” Duncan said. “They’d only caused us misfortune.”

“But then we saw that you three were in the city,” said Quigley. “A small column in the society pages in the Morning Mendacity mentioned that young Violet Baudelaire was dazzling everyone with her inventions.”

That made Violet snort. “Not a single one of my inventions is useful to the sort of people who read the society pages.”

“A lot of useful information can be hidden in the society pages. After all, it helped us find you,” Isadora pointed out.

“A fair point,” Klaus said.

The Quagmires had a more difficult time getting access to their fortune than the Baudelaires had. For one thing, Quigley had legally been declared dead and the bank was reluctant to hand over any money to a deceased person or anyone who chose to spend time with someone who claimed to be a deceased person. They’d had to wait for a DNA test to be run before Mulctuary Money Management decided they weren’t scammers.

“And once we were settled in, it took a while to decide to call you,” Duncan said.

“Why?” Sunny made a face. “We’re your dearest friends.”

Duncan grinned at her straightforwardness, but then his smile slipped. “We weren’t sure you’d want to see us.”

“The newspapers said you were all doing so well,” Isadora hastened to add.

“We didn’t know if seeing us would dredge up any unpleasantness,” Quigley finished.

“Of course it hasn’t!” Klaus and Sunny exclaimed at once.

“Of course not,” Violet echoed, sounding more vehement than she felt.

She had thought that knowing what happened to the Quagmires would give her a sense of satisfaction. Instead, Duncan had been right—frankly, it was dredging up all sorts of unpleasant feelings. And despite the hopeful glances that Quigley kept sneaking at her all through the dinner, she felt nothing toward him. Not a rekindling of romantic feeling, not even a spark of tenderness toward a dear friend. Perhaps the vodka was dulling all her feelings. But no, there was the sick undercurrent of dread that she’d felt every time the Quagmires slipped from her grasp, the pang of knowing that not even her best efforts could have kept them safe.

All she really wanted for the Quagmires to go away—to their house, to Winnipeg, even back to Peru for all she cared. Which was a horrible thing to think. After all, no one understood the Baudelaires’ experiences like the Quagmires did. If there were any sets of people more well fitted to be friends (or more), it was them.

What was wrong with her?

For the rest of the evening, in which time the Baudelaires told the Quagmires what had transpired on their end, Violet avoided engaging with any of the triplets directly. She hummed and nodded at their comments and answered questions if asked. Mentally, she was calculating how soon she could plead exhaustion and head to her bedroom for solitude. But no, if she went to her bedroom before the Quagmires left, Sunny and Beatrice would use it as an excuse to stay up far past their bedtime and Sunny would be unreasonable in the morning.

God, what she wouldn’t give some days to have a nanny to take care of those sorts of things for her.

Or a parent.

The longing and loss and anger surrounding her parents’ death came surging to the surface of Violet’s chest so violently she almost gasped. What would she be doing now if her parents were still alive? It was a Friday evening; she could have been anywhere in the city, behaving like a wealthy twentysomething with no plans or thoughts past her next invention.

Quigley pulled her aside when the evening finally drew to a close and Duncan and Isadora were listening to Beatrice tell a story about something or other.

“Listen,” he said quietly, “I know that what happened between us… Well, it was years ago and neither of us knew what we were doing. But if you ever…”

Panicked, Violet burst out, “I’m seeing someone.”

Quigley’s face registered surprise and disappointment. “Oh, the papers didn’t mention…”

Some sliver of affection broke through the numbness and Violet felt bad for him. “Sorry, I’m not actually. But I still don’t think it’s the best idea for you and I to become involved like that. I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad I tried anyway.” Quigley stuck out a hand for her to shake. “Friends?”

“Of course.”

Later, finally alone in her room, Violet became so agitated by her thoughts about the whole evening that she slipped out of the house and went to a seedy bar she sometimes patronized, a word which here means “would sit and drink cocktail after cocktail and shot after shot until she could barely make it home.” When a woman sitting at the other end of the bar ordered Violet a drink and Violet made it a triple, the woman smirked at her in a way Violet could only characterize as dangerous.

She downed the drink in one when the bartender brought it to her.

If she couldn’t form or maintain healthy non-familial relationships, she would take what she could get.


	4. chapter the fourth

Violet hated her birthday. It reminded her of the idyllic birthdays she’d spent with her parents and the horrific birthday she’d spent on the Queequeg when Sunny had almost died. She’d just as soon skip it altogether, but Beatrice and Sunny were of the age where birthdays were a big deal.

Beatrice.

Beatrice’s birthday wasn’t long after Violet’s and that was another reason Violet grew edgy when her birthday approached. This year, Beatrice would be turning eight years old.

Eight years old was a significant milestone. Violet remembered when she turned eight. That was the year she had made her first pair of automatic roller skates. And, according to one of the many parenting books neatly stacked underneath Violet’s bed, eight was the age that children began to feel and show more sophisticated emotions as well as begin to grasp abstract concepts. That wasn’t all.

_Generally, children who experience trauma between ages five and eight show higher signs of mental illness in adulthood_ , the book said. Violet had underlined the sentence with a slightly shaky hand. Beatrice didn’t show any signs of early childhood trauma (there was no clinging or bedwetting or poor peer relationships), but that didn’t mean symptoms of other problems wouldn’t develop with time.

As her birthday loomed on the horizon, Violet burned through her stash more quickly than normal, trying to tell herself that Beatrice was fine. She was better than fine, in fact. A child psychologist had evaluated Beatrice, and Sunny as well, and hadn’t diagnosed her with a laundry list of neuroses.

It had been Klaus who first brought the idea of therapy up.

“What do you think about therapy?” he asked one evening while Violet was tinkering in her studio.

She dropped her wrench. Had he found one of her stashes? She was so careful about acquiring and disposing of all signs of it. It was only a problem if you got sloppy. Violet Baudelaire was anything but sloppy, even when she had had inordinate amounts of alcohol.

“There’s plenty of research to support it,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. “Why?”

“I want to start seeing one,” he answered.

“You?” Violet almost dropped the wrench again. “Why?”

That made Klaus laugh. “Well, to begin with, our parents died in a traumatic way when we were at an impressionable age.”

“Lots of people’s parents die traumatically when they’re at an impressionable age.”

“And those people probably need therapy to help them process it.” Klaus shrugged. “But I can’t control those people. I can only control me.”

How was he so put together? His ability to be so matter-of-fact while admitting he needed help was baffling to Violet. Besides, if he thought _he_ needed help, what did he think about _her_? Did he see all the ways she was falling short in her role as a caretaker? By telling her that he was going to start going to therapy, was he hinting that she needed to go more than he did?

“If that’s what you want, I can’t stop you. You’re an adult.” Violet turned her back on him, bringing her attention back to the collection of gears on the table. She could not, in that moment, remember exactly what it was she was building.

“I wasn’t only thinking about it for me.”

There it was. Violet snagged her finger between the teeth of some cogs and almost swore. He was going to tell her that she needed to get her head checked.

“ _Really, Violet, you’re not as sharp or as capable as you used to be. Perhaps we should get that looked at._ ”

She needed a drink.

“I think Sunny ought to go as well.”

“Sunny’s fine,” Violet said, more as a reflex rather than out of any real conviction. “She’s doing well in school and she even has a few friends.”

_Unlike me_.

“She doesn’t like being touched.”

“That’s just her personality.”

“Is it? Or is it a result of our past?”

Sunny had already been judged so much in her short life. As a factory worker, as an administrative assistant, as a murderer, as a circus freak… Every time a school report from a new teacher came back, Violet held her breath. Her teachers had been sympathetic and understanding of Sunny’s unique qualities so far, but how long could that last? She had an unusually large vocabulary to go along with her still unusually sharp teeth. She didn’t like to do the things other children liked to do. And while, yes, she did have friends, she didn’t have very many. What if a teacher decided that Sunny’s eccentricities were a result of abuse or neglect on Violet’s part?

What if a therapist decided that Violet was an insufficient guardian for her sister?

“She’ll never agree to go,” Violet said. “Remember how much she pushed against the idea of going to school?”

“And look how much she likes it now. I think that if we both suggest it and if she knows I’m going too, she’ll at least try it.”

He was right. Sunny liked to march by the beat of her own drum—a cliché which here means, “preferred to do things in her own way”—but she gave heed to the words of her older siblings.

“All right. We can talk with her about it tonight.” Violet felt her right hand twitch. How long had it been since she’d had a drink? Three hours? Two? Her mind flashed to the books under her bed, specifically to all of the ways a child could be damaged by their environment. “And I suppose we may as well present the idea to Beatrice while we’re at it.”

Sunny reacted much in the way Violet and Klaus had predicted. Initially she fought against the idea, but once it was made clear that she had a choice and that Klaus would be going, she conceded. Since Beatrice did everything Sunny did, she agreed with minimal fuss.

The therapists—each girl went to their own—did not declare Violet an unfit guardian. They were not taken away to a better family. In fact, Beatrice’s therapist told Violet and Klaus that Beatrice was very well-adjusted for a child who had been through what she had.

“If you hadn’t told me about the circumstances of her birth and early childhood beforehand, I never would have guessed,” he told them.

Klaus gave Violet a relieved smile. Violet mirrored it automatically.

She should have shared his relief. Beatrice being a well-adjusted child was a good thing, she told herself later that night. It meant she had done her job well.

Instead of feeling relieved or satisfied, Violet felt drained.

Beatrice was fine, sure, but for how long? And thanks to what? Violet had done her best, but if her time on the run had taught her anything it was that her best wasn’t enough to keep the next bad thing from happening. It was sheer luck that she hadn’t damaged Beatrice so far; nothing else.

How long did she have until that luck ran out?

Sunny's assessment had come back better than Violet expected, but not as well as Beatrice's. Although she was relatively well-adjusted, Sunny had attachment and trust issues that would manifest in unpleasant ways if they weren't handled correctly. And yes, Klaus was right—Sunny's aversion to touch was indeed borne out of the traumatic events of her early childhood, including but not limited to being tied up and locked in a cage, being falsely accused of murder, and contracting a deadly fungus and being trapped in a diving helmet.

As part of her treatment, Sunny went to therapy twice a week with a therapist she, surprisingly, liked very much. The therapist spoke to her as if she was a person, not as if she was a fragile, broken child. Which she was, technically speaking. It would take quite some time, the therapist cautioned Klaus and Violet, for them to fully realize the reach Sunny's trauma would have over her life and even longer to figure out how to help Sunny as best they could.

Klaus was more deflated after that visit, and Violet was dejected. She had already failed Sunny; the therapist had essentially said the damage had been done. All therapy would do would be mitigate the effects of the damage. How long would it be until Violet allowed Beatrice to be messed up in an irreversible way?

Violet burned the parenting books in the blacksmith forge in the backyard, hoping they would remove the paranoia she felt.

She still heard their voices tugging at her mind at all hours of the day and they only got louder as Beatrice’s birthday got closer.

The girls created a month countdown to Beatrice’s birthday. Every morning before school, Beatrice would tear off another paper link on the chain. Violet watched it get shorter and shorter with trepidation.

“We haven’t forgotten your birthday,” Sunny informed her when she noticed her sister’s glum expression. “I’m still planning to bake you a cake and we can throw a party and invite the Quagmires and that girl who keeps calling.”

“She’s a woman, not a girl,” Violet replied evenly, tapping her fingers against her mug.

“And if Violet doesn’t want to invite her, that’s her choice,” Klaus said. “Remember what you talked about in therapy last week? Boundaries?”

“I know, I know.” Sunny threw him a dirty look. “It’s just that I would like boundaries a lot more if Violet actually volunteered information once in a while. Is this woman her girlfriend? What are her intentions? What happened with Quigley? He hasn’t been around with flowers for Violet at all! Will I commit a faux pas by inviting both this woman and Quigley to the party?”

“Invite them both,” said Violet. She didn’t want either of them there, but conceding was the quickest way to end the conversation.

The party would consist of the Baudelaires, the Quagmires, and Jane—too intimate a gathering for Violet’s liking. What she really wanted, if she had to have a party at all, was one that filled the house with people she didn’t know or care about. She could glide from room to room and give off the impression of inner cohesion without having to speak to anyone for longer than a few minutes. Her siblings would see that she had made all sorts of connections and knew how to be as good a hostess as their mother.

And she could slip away far more easily in an indifferent crowd than in a close net of loved ones.

Orchestrating Beatrice’s party and shopping for her presents in advance kept Violet’s mind off her own party for a few days. She wrapped the packages in brown paper in her inventing studio, working when she ought to have been sleeping. On the last gift, she couldn’t get the tape to cooperate and ended up flinging the whole mess across the studio.

She collapsed to the floor, reaching for a bottle and sobbing.

There is a story that the Baudelaires’ parents read to Violet and Klaus (and Sunny, although she was too young to remember it) in which the author carefully details the lives of four sisters as they grow up amongst sundry trials. One of the sisters has a particularly difficult bout of depression after a series of setbacks, which includes the death of the sister to whom she is closest.

The plucky young woman tries her best to do what is expected of her and although she loves her family very much, she begins to feel hopeless about her existence. Describing this period in the young woman’s life, the author said, “Something like despair came over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier. ‘I can't do it. I wasn't meant for a life like this, and I know I shall break away and do something desperate if somebody doesn't come and help me,’ she said to herself.”

On the floor of her studio, nearly twenty-four hours before her twenty-third birthday, Violet Baudelaire found herself repeating those lines to herself over and over. The amount of rum she consumed made no impression on the crispness of her speech.

“I can’t do it. I wasn’t meant for a life like this, and I know I shall break away and do something desperate if somebody doesn’t come and help me.” Violet tossed the bottle onto the wood floor and wrestled with a bottle of whiskey.

But no one was going to help.

Violet was on her own.

Which was technically untrue. She wasn’t on her own—she had a wonderful, caring family and many other friends and associates who would support her if she only reached out and asked. She could even go to a therapist, like Klaus and Sunny.

But she couldn’t ask. Every time she even thought about it, her chest constricted and her breaths came at a dizzying pace. She couldn’t ask for help for a multitude of reasons, chief of which being an abiding distrust of people in general that, she was discovering, had no measurable end.

She _felt_ alone and that was what mattered.

After she saw Klaus, Sunny, and Beatrice off to school, Violet went to her bedroom to pack. She couldn’t face her birthday, she couldn’t face the party.

She couldn’t face Beatrice getting closer to the day when Violet would damage her irreparably.

A few small stacks of money went into the valise. A few outfits. Her favorite set of tools. A backup hair ribbon. Some tiny bottles of schnapps.

The picture of her with Beatrice on her lap, flanked by Klaus and Sunny, taken at Briny Beach some four years ago, stayed on her bedside table.

This would hurt them. She knew it would. But she was also convinced that she would hurt them more if she stayed. The sooner she disappeared, the sooner they could recover. Her family was strong and they would go on being strong without her.

She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know how she would get there. She didn’t know how long she would be gone or what shape she would be in if she ever came back.

She just hoped that if she went far and fast enough, the churning, dark undertow of her mind would take a while to catch up with her.

Before she left the house for good, she placed Beatrice's presents in a neat stack on the dining room table.

After locking the front door, Violet deposited her key in the mailbox.

She did not leave a note.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aim of this fic is to explore what possible motivation(s) Violet would have for abandoning Beatrice. This obviously isn’t The Answer, but I hope it has been a worthwhile character study. Thank you for reading!
> 
> With all due respect,  
> B


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